The Dweller in the Depths is a superhero who requires a serious image makeover if he is ever to take centre stage in Warner Bros' planned rollout of movies based on DC Comics' venerable back catalogue. There is, quite simply something deeply silly about water-breathing heroes in the first place: just ask Waterworld's Kevin Costner. But Aquaman's classic incarnation really is one of the hokiest in the entire DC canon: he is usually presented as the blue-eyed, blond-haired sometime king of Atlantis, a man with the ability to communicate with sea-life and speak any language on Earth, thanks to his telepathic abilities. As if that last part makes any sort of sense.

All of the above is no more ridiculous, of course, than the backstory surrounding Marvel's hugely popular Thor. And it is certainly no more dumb than some of the other golden-age heroes in DC's past that Warner apparently plans to revive: Wonder Woman, Shazam and Green Lantern spring to mind.

But Aquaman has being subjected to indignities that even the above never faced (despite Green Lantern's rubbish 2011 live-action film and the other Princess Diana's predilection for invisible planes). A few years back he was the subject of a very silly fictional movie in the hit HBO comedy series Entourage, one which brilliantly satirised the general poor quality of pre-Marvel Studios superhero movies and the determination of big-name Hollywood actors to take part in them nonetheless, in exchange for boatloads of cold, hard cash.

The much-missed Entourage, currently set for a big screen revival in 2015, is about a young "it" actor from the wrong side of New York who moves to Los Angeles with a group of equally unpolished friends after hitting it big in Hollywood. Vincent Chase, whose story is loosely based on that of producer Mark Wahlberg, only ends up taking the Aquaman job because he needs the money to maintain his outlandish mansion pool-party lifestyle. The fictional film, directed by ocean-loving director James Cameron, is eventually seen becoming a huge box office smash. But this is only after Aquaman spends an entire season's run being ridiculed: the enduring subtext is that this is a minor superhero who is unlikely to ever really find his way on to the big screen. Apparently rights holder Warner Bros thought so, too – one assumes HBO must have obtained some sort of permission to lampoon the character without fear of legal reprisals.

In the nine years since the Entourage storyline, much has changed, and the idea of an Aquaman movie doesn't seem nearly as foolish, particularly if the character can be reinvented. And here's where Momoa comes in: while certain unfortunate audiences may remember him for early appearances in the likes of Baywatch Hawaii, most have only known the Honolulu-born actor from his single season or so of appearances as Khal Drogo in the greatest swords-and-sorcery TV show of all time. Momoa's mixed-race ethnicity and rugged countenance are about as far as it's possible to get from the clean cut Aryan look of the classic Aquaman, making him the ideal candidate to reintroduce the water-dwelling superhero to audiences through a brand-new prism. To put it simply, Momoa could make us take Aquaman seriously.

Why is that so important? Well, Man of Steel succeeded for the most part because it vied to present a world as close as possible to reality, one in which Superman suddenly arrived to shock the planet with his very existence. While Marvel has generally used comic quips to plaster over the preposterous nature of some of its more far-out heroes, Warner seems to be planning a cinematic universe based around leaner, grittier versions of the classic DC staples. So Aquaman in Dawn of Justice needs to be believable as a figure who might just exist in some (admittedly pretty batty) version of our own universe.